Look what's stomping into theaters! That's right, those weirdly naked dinosaurs (where are the feathers?) are back to tickle your reptile brain in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. But we have many more critics' picks for you here, like Here to Be Hard: The Story of the Slits and the new thriller Nancy. Follow the links to see complete showtimes, tickets, and trailers, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our complete movie times listings or our film events calendar.
Movies play from Thursday to Sunday unless otherwise noted.
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2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick's megalith of a film questions the nature of intelligence and consciousness through the story of an astronaut pitted against the malevolent computer on his spaceship. If you haven't it seen it yet, you're lucky: Your first experience can be with a 70mm restoration.
AMC Pacific Place
Thursday only
American Animals
Based on a true story about a plot to relieve the library at Kentucky’s Transylvania University of its most valuable tomes (including a drool-worthy Havell edition of Audubon’s Birds of America), director Bart Layton’s first foray into scripted filmmaking is an odd mash-up of his usual documentary style and narrative storytelling. Most of the time, the mixture works. The scripted, acted parts of the movie—which make up its bulk—are fully engrossing, and although Layton’s stylistic decisions are colored by familiar Scorsese and Kubrick influences, more often than not, the result is zippy and fun. Layton is also well aware of the countless heist movies that have preceded this one, and the film’s riffs on the genre add levels of unexpected complexity and sadness. These four young thieves were raised on Hollywood-glorified visions of crime, and American Animals exposes the aimlessness and emptiness at the heart of their caper. NED LANNAMANN
Various locations
Aperture
See new shorts by students of the Blanket Fort Films Motion Picture Program, which aims to boost people underrepresented in film. The movies include "Bad Theology," filmed at Black & Tan Hall and starring the amazing dancer Randy Ford and poet J Mase III as well as "Same Same But Different," co-created by Stranger designer L Fried. Hang out with the filmmakers afterward at the Cloud Room Bar.
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday only
Best of SIFF 2018
Missed Seattle International Film Festival audience favorites? They’ll be screened again, along with the award winners. Don't miss your second chance to see two French films, See You Up There and C'est la vie!
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only
Breath
An uncommonly strong coming-of-age story about two young best friends in early 1970s Australia who, under the tutelage of an older adept, become immersed in the itinerant, vaguely mystical, entirely hardcore culture of surfing (before it was a lifestyle available to weekend warriors). The film is based on a best-selling Australian book, and you can easily see why the story and characters would generate such broad appeal. It’s not quite as brainy as William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, but not quite as cartoony as Point Break. And the surfing bits are killer. SEAN NELSON
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday
David Lynch Movie Night: Blue Velvet Times Two
David Lynch tore the veil off the myth of Reagan’s America with this genuinely disturbing, funny, seedy, perverse, all-the-way-dark masterpiece about a young man (Kyle MacLachlan) who finds a severed ear on a lawn, then more or less climbs inside it to discover the seeds of evil that lurk beneath the perfectly trimmed lawns of his quaint Oregon town—and within himself, too. In a time when everyone seems to be arguing about what America once was and should be again, Blue Velvet is an essential reminder of what it is. SEAN NELSON
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Deadpool 2
Everything you could possibly want from a sequel to Deadpool is in place: the relentless breaking-down of the fourth wall; Deadpool’s twisted, self-flagellating humor and his snipes at pop culture, the X-Men franchise, characters in the franchise, the death of characters in the franchise. There are perfectly choreographed, partially slow-motion, and hilariously absurd CGI-augmented (and in some cases fully initiated) fight sequences; gratuitous and non-too-serious violence and carnage...Basically, Deadpool spends a lot of time wallowing in his own self-pity, the boundaries of his mutant-ness are tested, and once he figures out what he’s supposed to be doing—keeping a soldier from the future, Cable (Josh Brolin), from killing 14-year-old Russell Collins—the action re-starts in earnest. LEILANI POLK
Various locations
First Reformed
Don’t make the mistake I made at the Telluride Film Festival when I skipped this unexpected magnum opus from the writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Paul Schrader’s latest film is a return to form. Infused with elements from his Calvinist upbringing and 1950s art-house cinema (check out his newly reissued book Transcendental Style in Film on Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer), First Reformed revolves around the Reverend Ernst Toller (portrayed with devastating restraint by Ethan Hawke). He is a former military chaplain ministering to a tiny congregation in upstate New York, and he can’t get past the deep grief and spiritual isolation caused by the ill-fated death of his enlisted son. When congregant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her troubled (and radical environmentalist) husband, Toller discovers his church’s distinguished financial savior is an amoral corporate polluter, and he becomes obsessed with saving a world he believes is destroying itself. The film also stars Cedric the Entertainer as a mega-church pastor and Toller’s overseer. CARL SPENCE
Various locations
The Gospel According to André
For the last four decades, André Leon Talley has sat in the front row at the world's most important fashion shows. He may seem an unlikely candidate to become a style icon and tastemaker in a world that's overwhelmingly white and cosmopolitan: Talley is a six-foot-six gay black man from the segregated American South. While no feature-length film could fully capture his big, fascinating life, The Gospel According to André gives us some good glimpses. I'd mentally linked Talley with the excess of the 1990s supermodel scene and the cold snobbery of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. (Talley has worked at Interview magazine, Women's Wear Daily, W, the New York Times, and Vogue, and been a judge on America's Next Top Model, among other fashion endeavors.) While Talley fits in with that crowd—he calls everyone "darling"—he's also caring and generous. This documentary is bedazzled with fashion stars who have nothing but glowing things to say about him, and also friends of Talley's from high school and college who also have glowing things to say. ELINOR JONES
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday
Here To Be Heard: The Story of the Slits
Fans of British punk-reggae mavericks the Slits, rejoice! A long-overdue documentary about the women-dominated group that created one of the greatest albums ever—1979’s Cut—is the respectful historical treatment these riot-grrrl precursors deserve. Made on a tiny budget, Here to Be Heard: The Story of the Slits by Bellingham director William E. Badgley uses the scrapbook kept by bassist Tessa Pollitt as its organizing device. The filmmaker shoots the musician, now in her late 50s, leafing through the yellowed clippings from UK music mags to trigger her memories about the Slits’ tribulations and triumphs, and as a prompt for archival footage from England’s febrile 1970s punk scene, out of which the Slits sprouted like weird flowers that refused to blossom in their prescribed plot of land. Badgley rightly keeps the focus on the women—Pollitt, Palmolive, Viv Albertine, and the late Ari Up, to whom the film is dedicated—who fostered a radical approach to songwriting that hasn’t lost any of its piquancy over the last four decades. Badgley’s scrappy, heartfelt portrait mirrors his subject’s DIY aesthetic with a true fanatic’s intensity. It may lack polish, but its zeal in telling an important and under-acknowledged story more than compensates for its limitations. DAVE SEGAL
Northwest Film Forum
Friday-Sunday
Hereditary
If you’re not comfortable with the very real possibility that you’ll be drenched in sweat and cowering in the fetal position by the end of Hereditary, perhaps this is one cinematic experience you should skip. But you’d be missing out—writer/director Ari Aster’s feature debut might be one of the most beautiful and nauseating horror movies ever made. Hereditary centers on miniaturist artist Annie Graham (an Oscar-worthy Toni Collette), whose family is rattled by mysterious events following the death of her reclusive mother. Her daughter, tween outcast Charlie (Milly Shapiro), is apparently grieving the hardest of them all—she spends her free time making dolls out of dead pigeons and always looks like she’s got a category five hurricane brewing inside her head. Hereditary is brilliant—the whole thing hums with cold electricity that’s guaranteed to unsettle your soul. Aster gracefully illustrates humanity’s ancient fear of predestined fate in a setting, and with a family unit, that feels deeply rooted in reality. It’s also a powerful reminder of the horror genre’s underutilized potential as a source for empathy—proof that it’s possible to uncover great truths about the human condition, so long as we’re willing to kneel down in the dirt and pick apart the rotting carcasses of our worst fears. Like Hereditary, it’s gross, but it’s worth it. CIARA DOLAN
Various locations
Incredibles 2
Incredibles 2 simply isn’t as tightly tied together as the first. Its villain, the Screenslaver, isn’t as key to defining Elastigirl’s character as Syndrome was to Mr. Incredible’s in the first film—so when everything climactically comes together in the third act, Incredibles 2 ultimately packs a weaker thematic punch. This isn’t really a knock, though. What Incredibles 2 (slightly) sacrifices in cohesion and heart it makes up for with action and comedy. He opens Incredibles 2 with back-to-back set pieces that quickly put the previous film’s finale in the rearview; he closes the film with a team-based triumph that any three X-Men flicks combined couldn’t compete with; and when he goes for the gag (which is often), it feels like Chuck Jones-era Looney Tunes via classic-era Simpsons (which Bird himself helped make classic). Incredibles 2 isn’t as good or affecting as the first, but it is prettier, louder, faster, and funnier—and if you have to make a trade, that’s not a bad one. BOBBY ROBERTS
Various locations
Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town
In terms of tone and texture, this film would have been right at home in the low-budget American independent film explosion of the early 1990s. The plot is simple: Mackenzie Davis plays a young, broke musician with a huge chip on her shoulder who has to make it across LA without money or a car to try to ruin a party celebrating the engagement of her ex-boyfriend to her ex-best friend. Along the way, she has tragicomic encounters with friends who are sick of her shitty, self-involved attitude, and other odd denizens of what used to be called slacker culture. It all may sound familiar, but the performances (especially Davis, but also Lakeith Stanfield, Alia Shawkat, Annie Potts!!!, and others) are startling. Best of all: A scene in which the tormented estrangement of Davis and her sister (the magnificent Carrie Coon) plays out entirely in their eye contact as they play and sing Heavens to Betsy’s “Axemen” as an acoustic duet. Scenes like that are what movies are for. SEAN NELSON
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
I totally understand why people object to these films and their CGI manipulations, but I am helpless before the allure of plausible dinosaurs wreaking havoc on humans. I thought the original Spielberg ones were killer. I thought the Joe Johnston third sequel was killer. I thought the reboot Jurassic World was killer. And I think this new one, again starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of whom I can usually live without, looks, guess what: killer. I love films with dinosaurs chasing and killing people. It’s what movies are for. SEAN NELSON
Various locations
Mary Shelley
Like The Young Karl Marx, Mary Shelley is a film about a central figure of European culture that’s directed by a nonwhite person. In the case of The Young Karl Marx it was Haitian Raoul Peck. With Mary Shelley, which is about the author of the Western classic Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, it’s Haifaa Al-Mansour (one of Saudi Arabia’s first female film directors). In the way no European director could really make a film like The Young Karl Marx, no European could make a film like Mary Shelley. It is a very peculiar and even weirdly restrained adaptation (starring Elle Fanning). Furthermore, the director is now working on a film with a black American cast, Nappily Ever After. Now that’s what I call globalization. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
Thursday only
The Matrix
In 2011, economist Yanis Varoufakis posted an essay on his blog titled “The Trouble with Humans: Why is labour special and especially targeted at a time of crisis” that provides an interesting interpretation of the science-fiction classic The Matrix. The film’s basic plot: In the year 1999, a computer hacker named Neo (Keanu Reeves) learns from a mysterious figure, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), that the world he lives in is not real, but a sinister computer simulation designed by machines to keep humans content while farming their bodies for energy. He is also told the year is not 1999, but closer to 2199. After dealing with the shock of this revelation, Neo decides to leave the simulation, enter “the desert of the real” (the real world, which is dark, grim, and gothic), and join the human rebellion against the machines. In Varoufakis’s opinion, this film is so close to the way things actually are in our world that it is basically a documentary. CHARLES MUDEDE
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday
Mountain
If you crave spectacular natural footage and beautiful music combined, this documentary about mountains and those who climb them, scored by Australian Chamber Orchestra and narrated by Willem Dafoe, should give you exactly what you want.
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
My Architect
Nathaniel Kahn, the son of the major 20th-century architect Louis Kahn, goes on a cinematic journey to understand his estranged father's hidden lives (including three families who didn't know each other) and his lonely death at Penn Station in 1974. This moving documentary was nominated for an Oscar and won many film festival awards.
Scarecrow Video
Sunday only
Nancy
Andrea Riseborough and Steve Buscemi (The Death of Stalin), joined by Ann Dowd, J. Smith-Cameron, and John Leguizamo, star in Christina Choe’s thriller about a woman who becomes convinced she was a child kidnap victim and creates a string of online hoaxes. Choe herself was surprised by the timeliness of her film, given the era of "fake news": “It’s become a timely topic because of our lovely president, the liar-in-chief,” she says in an interview in Variety. “It’s a strange time as a society when the nature of truth is under attack.”
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Friday–Sunday
Ocean's 8
If there were ever a time for an all-female cast of big name Hollywood women to pick up where a cast of big name Hollywood men left off, it’s now. The premise is pretty straightforward: Sandra Bullock stars as Debbie Ocean, the estranged sister of Danny Ocean (the character played by George Clooney). She’s in the robbing industry, too, though her fresh parole implies she might not be as savvy as her bro. Nonetheless, she leaves prison with a plan to pull a heist at the Met Gala in NYC, and she must put together a crack group of professionals to execute it. Steven Soderbergh isn’t at the helm, but he did co-produce, and apparently he, Clooney and Jerry Weintraub were all involved in Ocean 8’s conception, so you can expect it to have a similar pace and the slick quality of the other films of the franchise. Plus, the women cast is stellar and diverse—Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Awkwafina and Anne Hathaway included. LEILANI POLK
Various locations
RBG
All hail Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Better known as “RBG” to her fans (and “Bubby” to her grandkids), at 85 years old, the US Supreme Court justice still has a fierce intellect, a duty to the law, and an immense inner and physical strength. Over the long course of her career, RBG repeatedly defended the rights of everyone to live free from bias, but, as Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg says, Ginsburg “quite literally changed life for women.” And she’s still doing it. With intimate interviews with family and friends, as well as RBG herself, the film captures the life of a woman with a heart none of us wants to stop ticking. KATIE HERZOG
Various locations
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Much like its plot, Solo shouldn’t work. It doesn’t work. It wins anyway. Boy and Girl try to con their way out of their shitty lives. Boy gets away, and vows to return for Girl. Instead, he gets caught up in a freewheeling life of crime with a giant dog, a cranky thief, a well-dressed gambler, and a robot-rights activist droid. That last bit sounds sorta heavy for Star Wars, right? It is. Solo has the tonal consistency of a detuned piano, and it’s constantly throwing around interesting-but-unexamined ideas and characters, which pop up every few minutes and then are never seen again. But for those seeking weightless escapism with enough gags, winks, and in-jokes to fill the Millenium Falcon’s cargo hold, not to mention laboriously Marvel-esque, overly connected worldbuilding? You’re gonna have fun.
BOBBY ROBERTS
Various locations
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Gene Wilder proves once again that he was indeed the greatest American actor of the 1970s with his titanic performance in this perverse, creepy, macabre yet heartwarming musical classic.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
The question isn't how much you will cry. The question, which only emerges days into the aftermath of seeing this extraordinary new documentary about the life and work of Fred Rogers, is this: What exactly are you crying about? Possibility number one: good old-fashioned nostalgia. A huge chunk of the film consists of clips from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the public TV show for children Rogers created, wrote, and performed multiple roles in for 33 years. Seeing the way he spoke directly to his viewers, making sure we knew we were valued, cared for, seen, and known is a powerful reminder of the early validation the show provided. And learning that this style of address arose from radical education theory, developed by Rogers himself (in conjunction with learned colleagues like Spock, Braselton, and Erikson), about the benefits of being candid with children, only deepens the admiration. But this footage also stirs up the memory of inarticulate childhood sorrow his attention helped to alleviate, taking you back to the time before you were capable of constructing the armor required for this nightmare of a world. Possibility number two: the impossibility of such a human existing again, either on television or, indeed, on earth. He represented a strain of religious conviction that seems inconceivable now. Through his show, he demonstrated the precepts of his faith—kindness, empathy, dignity, peaceful coexistence, safety, love—without ever once mentioning, or even gesturing toward, a deity. SEAN NELSON
Various locations
The Workers Cup
As you thrill to the World Cup, don't forget that the preparations for the next one up—in Qatar in 2022—is currently the focus of controversy and alarm over migrant workers' rights violations. This documentary shows that though they're mistreated, the workers aren't crushed: At night, they run their own soccer tournaments in the camps that house them. Adam Sobel's film opened Sundance earlier this year.
Grand Illusion
Sunday only
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